Oolite Bulletins

I looked through the rusties oxp with an idea to recreate the ships using Griff's ships and material entries. However, the stats of the rusties seem to be a bit too good when comparing the price. Makes the oxp feel a bit too cheaty to me.

For example Rustic Adder Player compared to the original:

price: 40000 (65000) diff: 38 %
max_energy: 80 (85) diff: 5.8 %
roll: 2.5 (2.8) diff: 11 %
max_speed: 230 (240) diff: 4.1 %

So IMO rebalancing would be in order. Especially I would bring down max_energy and max_speed for 10 % - 20 %. I could also go as far as limiting the installable equipment too. For example I might consider restricting the installation of military equipment as the old ship's systems can't handle those.

Any thoughts?

Maybe if it has -10% price tag it should have -10% on everything else? Keep it simple. If I take a look at the pictures you posted, that looks more like a -50%...

I don't know if it's doable via shaders, but you could try to get them randomly rusty, with only part of the ship (it's texture) rusted for not quite so neglected ships. So there are maybe three different stages of tear and wear? -10, -25 and -50? Or somewhat more conservative -5,-10, -20? Something like that?

My main issue with this concept is that the ships are regularly maintained to a high standard and therefore 'old bangers' just wouldn't be available. Any ship that was left to deteriorate like these would in fact just be a deathtrap and would explode/break-down in a terminal way/get lost in interstellar space after a misjump and be swept up by the Thargoids.
The ships last for literally hundreds of years - even the youngest Python available would be around 400+years old.

Smivs wrote:

My main issue with this concept is that the ships are regularly maintained to a high standard and therefore 'old bangers' just wouldn't be available. Any ship that was left to deteriorate like these would in fact just be a deathtrap and would explode/break-down in a terminal way/get lost in interstellar space after a misjump and be swept up by the Thargoids.
The ships last for literally hundreds of years - even the youngest Python available would be around 400+years old.

I don't know... there sure is a lot of dying going on in Oolite, so maybe some pilots would take that risk even further with a ship they otherwise couldn't afford... ...but I see your point. It would probably make sense to find this ships in low-tech worlds where there are no shipyard capacities to rework the ships to almost new.
And maybe this should add up to something like an additional breaking chance of equipment, maybe even core equipment, like in the Breakable Standard Equipment OXP.

Hmmm. I think that there should be older ship variants around that are cheaper and whose engines are more worn down and energy banks have seen better days. Ships that can't be made 'like new' with a maintenance overhaul. Making them like new would require changing the whole engine for example, which I don't think is part of the maintenance overhaul.

Maybe these could be seen as a salvaged ships that are put together from various other ships. Maybe these could be acquired only from a Salvage Gang.

As for the rustic look. I was merely experimenting with the materials and it was a result of that. To be honest, that Adder looks like a flying coffin to me . But gameplay wise there should be some external sign that marks the ship as different from a 'like new' ship. It could be a rustic appearance (as in Rusties oxp), or it could be something else. Maybe a Salvage Gang logo as a decal would do the trick. The color of the decal could mean the quality class of the ship.

Looks like I have to do some more pondering around this.

I do have a problem with ships which have been allowed to deteriorate beyond a certain basic state, but Frankenships cobbled together from parts by pirates and unscrupulous salvagers I can certainly live with.

What would also fit is the cut off systems, particularly the low tech planets. They would have very limited access to parts and so would keep servicing the old ones over and over. A bit like they do with cars in Cuba. Some of their cars have been kept going for decades.

I know Smivs knows what it is like trying to keep an older machine going long after the line has been discontinued.

Rorschachhamster wrote:

Maybe if it has -10% price tag it should have -10% on everything else? Keep it simple.

If ship A is 10 % better¹ than ship B in every respect, it will cost at least 50 % more in most game economies. In real life, I’d expect it to be more.

¹ Or 11.111… % for fellow pedants.

JensAyton wrote:

Rorschachhamster wrote:

Maybe if it has -10% price tag it should have -10% on everything else? Keep it simple.

If ship A is 10 % better¹ than ship B in every respect, it will cost at least 50 % more in most game economies. In real life, I’d expect it to be more.

¹ Or 11.111… % for fellow pedants.

That would mean that 10 % drop in stats should be compensated with about 30 % drop of price. That would be more reasonable than the original rusties pricing. And it would give the player more choices when upgrading ship. I'll test it a bit.

JensAyton wrote:

If ship A is 10 % better¹ than ship B in every respect, it will cost at least 50 % more in most game economies. In real life, I’d expect it to be more.

¹ Or 11.111… % for fellow pedants.

Oh, yes, of course.
On the other hand, these are used carship salesmen...

After experimenting a lot with the fiddled stats, I think there is no real need for those rusties. Not for me anyway. But I got another idea . That Death Trap Adder could be used in the Black Monks oxp when you do not meet the deadline and would otherwise be stripped of equipment and killed. Instead, you could be stripped of your ship and you would be thrown out flying a Death Trap Adder.

Oh... I would have liked that (no matter if it makes sense... overrated, anyway ).
I still would be interested in how you got that rusted look, anyway, as I'm still wanting to get into all that shaders stuff sometime in the future.

Rorschachhamster wrote:

Oh... I would have liked that (no matter if it makes sense... overrated, anyway ).
I still would be interested in how you got that rusted look, anyway, as I'm still wanting to get into all that shaders stuff sometime in the future.

If you put it that way, I'll have give another thought... That rust effect is no secret of course . It's done with Oolite's materials by coloring the grey texture to rust with diffuse_color and using a normal map created from a rusty texture. To get the normal map working from materials, I had to cut out Griff's custom shaders.

So, no shaders? I can do that!
Seriously, thank you. Normalmapping is right what I'm looking into atm.

Rorschachhamster wrote:

So, no shaders? I can do that!
Seriously, thank you. Normalmapping is right what I'm looking into atm.

No _custom_ shaders is probably the correct way to put it as normal map requires that the shaders are enabled. Quite a lot can be achieved through materials without the use of custom shaders. Materials and Material Test Suite are your best friends.